How Consumerism Stole Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner, and to many it means stressful shopping expeditions to the overcrowded mall to get the perfect gifts to make the people in your life happy. When we think of Christmas, we are now exposed to the images of spending money and receiving in return. Movies and TV shows, such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Its a Wonderful Life, can teach us the real meaning of this holiday, but do we really think of our impact with living in our consumerism society when buying up the stores?

"The fact that Christmas is at once the greatest religious holy day and the greatest commercial holiday in the Christian world constitutes what Pimlott (1962) calls the paradox of Christmas. The tension produced by this paradox surfaces each Christmas season when the consumer materialism seemingly stimulated by the holiday challenges the non-materialistic values enshrined by Christian theology..."

"...Materialism is construed here as the belief that having possessions is the most important source of satisfaction in life (Belk, 1985)."

Sources: Consumption: critical concepts in the social sciences, Daniel Miller

I am not advocating for the Christian religion, this video just proves that our culture has it's priorities out of touch with the human condition.

The Manufactured Routine of Breakfast

The classic American breakfast, while innocent enough in nature, may have roots with implanting false views when marketing the quick and cheap breakfast choice. Fast breakfast is the hallmark of our culture, if we even bother to eat breakfast at all. There are clear cut messages within our traditions and how they developed and embedded their meaning into our lives. We accept these traditional views as the norm, because we have been conditioned to grow up with simple things such as what we eat (pop tarts, cereal, orange juice), watch on television (cartoons), places we go on vacation (tropical resorts, skiing, camping). This article talks about the specific marketing industry on cereal and how normal products define who we are.

Click on this, to read the article about consumerism with cereal products:

http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20822.html

For all you bloggers.

First off: Internet, as I have mentioned before, gave birth to freedom of information. We can read anything we want online, build up our individualist lenses on how we view the world. The less ignorant, teach themselves to ask questions where the information they are exposing themselves too has been sourced from. Creating your own individualistic agenda is a great thing; you can identify what you like and find what you are passionate about whether it is blogging about sports, researching movies, connecting with people with similar interests.

When having your own individual agenda, people tend to gravitate towards social networks. Micro-Blogging, such as Twitter-“What are you doing?” is a compressed expression of intimacy. This way of socializing is a connected presence: Social relations or continuous exchanges that pass through networked objects blur the lines between “presence” and “absence.” This is also a hard concept to grasp, and giving examples of our daily lives and socialization with media can give insight. This “presence/absence,” can be when you post a message on Facebook, Twitter, etc. You are not physically present on the Facebook wall, talking to your friends, but you are physically typing what you would like to say, so your friend can either respond now or later. The absence is felt when you are not connected with the network, but your presence is there when you are “online.”

Ok this video is a bit dramatic, with asking: "are you in control?" but it does make you think about what you consider privacy. There are consequences for every action, in my opinion, but in the era of information overload, can we really be in control of our own lives?

In blogging, substantive information is a commodity that is used to build and maintain relationships;

“...this exchange of data than deep substantive or meaningful communication based on mutual understanding” (New Media, Networking, and Phatic Culture, Vincent Miller, pg. 390)

Information itself is now being converged onto one platform. Our lives are being represented across these forms of exposure, with selling ourselves to a network for our images, and information inputted onto our computers. We are participating in each other’s lives without knowing. News feeds have become hegemonic, (Heg-e-monic: Dominant influence) controlling what we see, read and process.

“...the stream of social information gives people a fake sense of intimacy with others that they do not really know that well. If this is true, it could be emotionally devastating.” (Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck, Danah Boyd, pg 17)

Some advances on the Internet program, "Firefox," how it gives users the power to clear their history and give them the impression they can control their internet environment

"New Friend Request"

This satire on our new social influences, exaggerates and adds a comic affect to how we use Facebook. Facebook is an extension of ourselves, and how we connect with people. This new platform lets us manipulate the information by privacy settings, who we are friends with, what groups and events we join. When we share and publish our lives, we do not think this as taking away our privacy. I am not saying that Facebook is a bad thing! Without this useful tool, how would people stay in touch and converse quickly without borders?

The only negative effect is the result it has on our perceptions on the world and how we see things. If our friends upload pictures from a party, everyone who is a "mutual friend" can see what you have done, and can make assumptions on the lack of substantive information given. This whole concept is hard to grasp without knowing the truth behind the medium. We have to understand that our Internet life is very public, and that it can be a useful tool if we use it to learn and connect, rather then convey our individualistic image. Think about this when you log onto your Facebook account and are bombarded with images and information from other peoples' lives. It can be hard to decipher what is relevant to your life, if you can opt-out of certain things you are exposed to.

We live in the era of convergence culture, which is act of converging aka "coming closer." Everything is connected, especially with our database way of receiving information. Everything on the Internet can be found and put under a data source, so it can be located.

“Social networking profiles push the networking practice to the forefront by placing more prominence on friends than the text being produced...the overriding point of the networking profile is to reach out and sustain a network through the maintenance of links.” (New Media, Networking, and Phatic Culture, Vincent Miller, pg. 390)

Phatic: In linguistics, a phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information. The term was coined by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in the early 1900s.

Knowledge is Key

In relation to the more broad topic of Hollywood influence in social settings, learning is the most beneficial outcome to our success as human beings. Unfortunately, with our new technologies, comes more and more information flooding our brains with constant images and stories which we should be in tuned with. How else would we know about the War in Dafur if it wasn't for news coverage and circulation of stories within our public sphere? If there was enough time for people to care about issues internationally, then there would be more knowledge, hence closing the gap between fact and fiction. It is common to see misinformed people talking about these issues from the small amount of information they were given. It is what your friends and family speculate on, discuss, and have biased opinions about.

This Chart from Stats Can. shows how 91% consumers of news, age 19 + are receiving their information from television. Subjecting ones self to one news source can lead to a distorted view on what is really going on. One obvious example is Fox News, and how misleading to viewers it really is. In my opinion, Fox is a modern day extremist group influencing opinions, and not explaining two sides of a side. This can implant fear in who watch without skepticism, since many believe everything they see and hear and accept it as truth.

"Our mind is of 3 categories: what we know, what we don’t know, and what we don’t know we don’t know. Not knowing is unfortunate; not knowing that we don’t know is tragic." -W. Erhart


An article from Edmonton Journal, summing up how our future generations will either be kept in the dark and not be given the tools to understand our world, or be taught the ugly truth.

Ignorance isn't Bliss

Ignorance is dangerous. The province's plan to allow parents to decide whether children study controversial topics is dangerous.
Parents deserve to have a say in their children's education; however, parents are not unbiased and omnipotent. Education does not aim to force children to accept specific perspectives; it tries to provide them with the tools to make informed decisions and the knowledge to understand the unfamiliar.

Teaching a student about sex will not make them promiscuous. Teaching them about different religions does not force their conversion.
Parents who deny their children access to knowledge live in fear and are passing these fears to their children.

By simply allowing a student to be pulled from various topics we are setting a dangerous precedent. We are telling them these things are wrong and should be ignored or, worse, fought. We breed a generation who believes discrimination and religious intolerance are the norm.
As a teacher, I have seen Arabic students who hate Jewish students and vice versa. Often, the hatred is a legacy from their parents.

I have seen religious discrimination and cruel bullying of non-mainstream sexual preferences. This is not taught in school; I can only assume it is taught by the parents.
Sometimes parents do not know best. Premier Ed Stelmach should open his eyes to the imperfections of many parents and the necessity for society to give access to information which may not be available at home.

Kristin Toms, Edmonton
Credit: Kristin Toms; The Edmonton Journal

sit down, stand up.

As we learn and are conditioned to be a certain way, influences in our lives like family and friends teach us how to act and understand the world around us. These influences only teach us so much, and for decades children have been relying on television for an outside source for entertainment, and subconscious learning. It is difficult to scientifically prove that media is negatively affecting impressionable children, since the media effects research throughout television history has not drawn any reasonable conclusions.

It is undeniable that children learn a great deal from what they are exposed to, but it cannot be said to be a good or bad thing. Where do we even learn certain traditions and know how to act in certain situations? Traditions like Christmas and other holiday activities are learnt when we are younger, but how much is learnt from the media now that every family in our culture celebrates the same traditions? Who told us that we were supposed to decorate a tree and put it in our house? How do we know that presents are expected? Why do families string up lights? These traditions have been formed by the media to make things, like Christmas more universal.

All our social influences combined whether it is family, friends, or technology, are programming new behaviours that we are familiar with, that can either be beneficial, such as being computer literate, or detrimental to our human condition, such as alienation, with technology distancing people from social contact.

This relates to my topic of reality in Hollywood. We learn certain dispositions and certain ideas which are implemented on us from a certain age, like male dominance, race segregation, and class separation. These unconsciously ideologies we learn from a young age are certainly hard to change because we cannot forget our experiences in life. It is much easier in our image saturated society, to understand things and to believe what you see, rather then asking questions.


This video shows how we learn in social settings and learn from our environment from punishment and reinforcement, also called "operant conditioning."

Manufacturing Reality.

The beginning of reality show programming started with TV game shows, where the concept was to entertain audiences with an unscripted anything-can-happen attitude. Throughout the years, that model has changed and has become the average person’s fantasy. Fantasies like living on a deserted island, singing cover songs for an audience, finding love or fame are now the model for modern day television.

American reality shows that gained popularity in early 2000, like American Idol and Survivor, continue to be watched and every season a new twist is added to give the audience something difference to look forward to. Prime time reality shows put the spotlight on all these ordinary people, making them stars. William Hung, auditioned for American Idol, and was not even a talented singer but he still made a considerable amount of money from remaking Ricky Martin’s video for “She Bangs.” Richard Hatch was a corporate trainer from Rhode Island, before winning the very first Survivor. He became well known when he won the prize of a million dollars. These examples of reality show sensations prove how we buy into what the TV shows produces and we take it as reality, and our television programming is now a reflection on our society.

What else is going behind the cameras? More reality shows have been produced since 2000 because viewers will watch what is more familiar to them, and many shows have been created to cater to certain groups. An older age group of retired middle class women may be drawn towards shows such as Wife Swap, the Bachelor, Dancing with the Stars, etc. Is this really reality? Do the people being filmed act differently when cameras are rolling? We can never be sure if these shows have a positive effect on us.

Like I said before, I know I am bias and cannot appreciate the entertainment aspect of reality shows. Viewers may be ignorant to what they are seeing and do not think to ask questions on what they are watching routinely. Looking at reality shows, can help understand where our societies priorities' are, and how our youth are being corrupted to be something other than themselves.

"The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain"